How Jeremy Weisz Turned a Podcast Into a Relationship-Building Machine

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For years, I’ve interviewed people about how books helped them build authority, but Jeremy Weisz doesn’t have a book, which is precisely why I wanted him on the show as the podcast evolves from one that only focuses on authors building authority into one that showcases entrepreneurs who have built their authority in other ways.

Weisz is the perfect example of that. He co-founded the podcast creation company Rise25 with John Corcoran and hosts the Inspired Insider podcast, using interviews not primarily to build an audience but to build relationships. He makes somewhere between five and 20 introductions a day, and his philosophy about podcasting runs counter to the way a lot of people approach it: rather than asking what a guest can do for him, he starts by figuring out what he can do for the guest.

That approach has turned interviews into some of the most important relationships in his life and business. Around 2012, while recording a series on direct-response marketers and copywriters, Weisz was referred to Brian Kurtz, who later wrote Overdeliver, and the two became close friends. Years later, Kurtz invited Weisz to a dinner in Chicago, Weisz brought Chris Voss and someone at that dinner told Voss he’d bought 100 copies of Never Split the Difference to give away. This is essentially Weisz’s authority strategy in miniature: create something valuable with someone, stay in their orbit and keep connecting good people to one another.

Weisz also has a system for making sure an interview doesn’t disappear the minute it’s released. Every conversation becomes a blog post, video and social clips distributed across 12 channels, which means the podcast is simultaneously a relationship tool and a content engine. Authors, he’s noticed, have an advantage here because they’ve already spent months or years figuring out what they think, giving them an almost unfair amount of material to work with.

And yes, we still talk about books, because Weisz has seen firsthand wha